Mo' Money Podcast | Personal Finance with Jessica Moorhouse

Millennial money expert, Accredited Financial Counsellor Canada® and podcast host Jessica Moorhouse interviews top personal finance & business experts like John Lee Dumas, Chris Guillebeau, Bruce Sellery, Preet Banerjee and Rob Carrick, as well as inspirational entrepreneurs, authors, bloggers, friends and family to help you learn how to manage your money better, make smarter choices, earn more money, become debt-free and live a more fulfilled and balanced life.
New episodes air every Wednesday. For helpful resources, blog posts and podcast episode show notes, visit jessicamoorhouse.com. To enquire about being a guest on a future episode, visit jessicamoorhouse.com/podcastsubmissions.

Have you heard of the FIRE movement before? In this episode I chat with Bob Lai from Tawcan about what it means to be financially independent and how make an investment strategy to get there.

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For anyone who wanted a deep look into the FIRE movement, and to get the low down on how to become financially independent, this is an episode you are gonna love! I chat with Bob Lai, the blogger behind Tawcan, about his plans to reach financial independence while being a single-income family with his wife and two kids.

He even shares what his personal investment strategy looks like: a mixture of dividend paying stocks (a.k.a. blue-chip stocks), index ETFs, and a small percentage of growth stocks.

Now, if you’re just getting started with your investment journey, before getting into DIY investing like Bob, a good place to start is by investing in index mutual funds, like the portfolios that Tangerine offers. It’s actually what I started investing with, as they track the index and charge way lower MERs than the big banks.

Financial Independence vs. Financial Freedom

Most people use these two terms interchangeably, I’ve even been guilty of it. But talking to Bob, I learned that they actually mean to very different things.

Financial independence is when your passive income exceeds your expenses. Many people believe the magic number is to have 25 times your living expenses saved up through savings and investments. Or if you’re more conservative, 33 times your living expenses.

Financial freedom on the other hand is a relatively loose term, but generally speaking mean that you’ve accumulated so much wealth that you don’t even have to worry about or rely on your passive income.

Happiness vs. Joy

Another concept we talked about was the difference between happiness and joy, and balancing the two. You see, happiness is externally driven and has an expiry date. For instance, when you get a raise or buy something you’ve been saving up for. Both of those things would make you happy, for a time, and then it would dissipate.

Joy is internally driven, and is the feeling of being at peace. It’s also less fleeting than happiness, and usually comes about from fulfilling experiences and being around your loved ones.

A big part of the FIRE movement is about focusing on joy instead of happiness. Also, joy doesn’t cost as much as happiness (if we’re talking about happiness through buying goods), so the more you focus on joy, the more money you’ll be able to save to reach your goal of financial independence.

Stocks that Pay Dividends vs. Stocks that Don’t

Not all stocks are the same. Some pay dividends, some don’t. The companies that don’t pay dividends (ie. Facebook) are the ones that are still in a growth stage. Instead of paying dividends to their shareholders, they reinvest their profits to continue to grow the company.

Companies that do pay dividends are companies that are already so big (Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson), that they don’t need to reinvest all of the profits for further growth, so they share their profits with their shareholders (also making those shares more lucrative to potential stock buyers).

Looking for some inspiration to get your spending under control? There's no better time than the present to try something new, like a no spend challenge. That's why I'm chatting with two of my podcast listeners for this episode, so they can share their experience and tips on how to save money and conquer their bad spending habits by doing a no spend challenge.

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For my first Listener Series episode for Season 6, I've got not one, but two podcast listeners on the show to share their experience and tips for doing a no spend challenge. Michaela and Dan are a couple, engaged and saving up for their wedding, and they got the idea to try out a no spend challenge by seeing someone do something similar on Instagram. Feeling like they never truly knew where they money was going, they embarked on this no spend challenge that would mean they could only spend money on their essentials, and try to live as frugally as possible.

Their hope was that it would help them reign in their spending and focus their spending on this that really mattered to them in life. They also wanted to stop the endless cycle of consumerism that so many of us or on (and feel like we can't get off). Well, they successfully did the challenge for a month, and now have continued to practice living below their means, saving the extra income, and just living a life that's not as focused on spending and buying new stuff.

After talking with them, it definitely inspired me to reign in my own personal spending and do my own version of a no spend month. For all of January, my husband and I have been making all of our meals at home (save for one lunch that cost us $30) and have not bought any alcohol (though I did buy one beer with a friend, but I'd made those plans back in December!). Like Michaela and Dan, we realized that not spending all of our money on going out to eat or buying beer and wine for our home like we regularly do, hasn't actually affected our happiness at all. Instead, we replaced those two big spending habits with other things, like cooking healthy meals at home, and swapping alcohol for lemon water, tea or coffee.

If you want to embark on something similar, I highly recommend doing a no spend challenge or your own, or signing up to my free Rich & Fit Detox. It's a free 5-day email challenge that shows you how to do a health detox, practice self-care, stop mindless spending and declutter your home.

Yes, you can bounce back from bankruptcy. More than that, you can take it as an opportunity to get your financial life together, never get in debt again, launch a successful business and be on your way to financial independence. Don't believe me? Well, just take it from my guest Perez Hilton, the go-to celebrity blogger who has created an empire for himself as an actor, author, blogger, podcaster, reality star & more.

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I can’t even believe this is really life right now, because somehow I was able to get the one-and-only Perez Hilton to chat with me on the podcast!

Many of you may already know this about me, but I am a total celebrity news junkie. I know it’s silly, but I think I just like the fantasy of it all. Plus, that life is just so far removed from my own, it’s kind of like watching an episode Teen Mom. It’s fascinating and entertaining, but I’m really glad that it’s not my own reality.

With that said, I’ve been a long-time reader of PerezHilton.com, going back probably when he started his blog back in 2005. I’m not lying when I say I’ve gotten into a routine of checking his website at least once per day, which is how I discovered his video about filing for bankruptcy when he was younger. I couldn’t believe he, a celebrity blogger, also had a personal finance story to tell, and I wanted to know more!

So, after watching his video, I tweeted at him saying I’d love to have him on my podcast, and to my delight, he said yes! And within a week, I had a recording of our interview together and could not wait to share it with you for Season 6 of the Mo’ Money Podcast!

In our interview together, we talk about it all. His money mistakes, the lessons he’s learned, how he hopes to achieve financial independence through passive income streams and real estate investing, and what he’s going to teach his kids about money when they grow up.

I hope you love this episode as much as I do, because it really was so much fun to record! Thanks a million Perez for taking the time out of your crazy busy schedule to talk money with me, I’ll never forget it!

For my first episode of SSN 6 of the Mo' Money Podcast, I interview well-known Canadian radio personality Buzz Bishop about DadCamp & how he teaches his kids about being responsible with money.

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It’s the start of a new season for the Mo’ Money Podcast (Season 6 to be specific), and I have got quite the line-up of guests for you, let me tell ya!

And similar to last year, this season definitely has a theme. Well, two themes really: financial independence and women authors. For this first episode of Season 6, we’re gonna start with the financial independence theme, since I interview well-known radio personality and influencer Buzz Bishop.

As I mentioned in the episode, I’ve been listening to Buzz since I was a tween, so it’s pretty surreal that I’m now interviewing him on my show! But a lot has changed in his life since those days at Z95.3 in Vancouver. On top of doing radio across the country, he also has two boys and founded DadCamp, a community and website that’s focused on getting dads together to learn from each other, bond and create a discussion surrounding the role of fathers today.

Since Buzz is already a successful media personality, DadCamp isn’t something he created to just earn more money on the side. He wanted to create it as way to help give back. So, all of the money he earns from it, he flips to Diabetes Canada and Team Diabetes, two causes he’s very passionate about. Is Buzz the best?

Aside from talking about DadCamp, we dive into his perspective on money, how he manages his personal finances and invests it, and also how he teaches his kids about money. He learned a lot from his dad, so he wants to make sure he does the same to his two boys. And he teaches them by weaving it seamlessly into regular conversations. Making it a natural topic of discussion is key, as well as being open to answering questions.

He also empowers his kids by giving them work to do on his blog so they can earn money. I think this is a great way to teach kids about saving, budgeting and earning money in a very practical and hands-on way. Kids learn best by doing, so I have a feeling his kids will be experts by the time they reach their 20s.